


Waking up Shepard

by ksaan



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Angst, Gen, Memory Loss, Original Character(s), Survival, Virus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 00:06:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4855733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksaan/pseuds/ksaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you're about to lose your entire memory but can leave one message to shape your future self, why not be Commander Shepard?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking up Shepard

So the world’s gone to shit overnight. Some virus in some lab managed to make its way into the general population and that sucker moved _fast._ Any cognizant being would have predicted global panic, but I guess I just didn’t realize how fast the fall would happen. But when news reports starting filing in about masses of people completely forgetting everything about their lives, then nations of lost and confused people rioting, and then nothing at all, well yeah I guess you could say panic had fully taken its hold.

            I’ve been pretty safe thus far, my small town remaining fairly isolated and clean while we were left in the dark, assuming the virus was still making its way towards us. New broadcasts were a thing of the past at this point, and any information we were able to get was looked at with a skeptic’s eye. How can you know who to trust when you don’t know who really _knows_ anything? So we soldiered on, surviving and trying to maintain a civil society in a world that didn’t resemble what it was a mere few months ago.

            From reports we were able to get at the beginning, back when information was more reliable, we knew the virus seemed to target all long term memories. If you became infected, your entire lifetime’s worth of memories were on their way out, and fast. We did daily checks of everyone left in town, asking the basic autobiographical questions that, at this point, everyone knew the answers to. We hoped that if one person fell to the virus, we’d be able to contain them and bring them up to speed on the current situation in time. That is, if they’d believe us at all, and we’d be able to not contract the virus ourselves. Luck had been on our side so far, but of course, luck always runs out eventually.

            The first person that we lost happened to be the person who distributed rations to the remaining population. It makes sense that Jim was the first to go, as he was the only person who regularly made contact with other remaining colonies and must have contracted it through a dealer. We never really knew how the virus was spread, but seeing as how we lost multiple people hours after we lost Jim, we guessed it was able to be passed on through touch. Containment has been declared basically impossible because it’s impossible to know who’s infected until they’re gone. So that was great.

            I haven’t really grasped it just yet, the idea that sometime in the coming hours my memory is just going to disappear and I won’t have any recollection of my life thus far. But, I’ve been given this notecard from our acting leader and instructions to write down whatever words I think will help me post memory-wipe so fuck it. If my memory sticks around like I’m hoping, really praying at this point, it does, then I can have a good laugh about it. And if not, then my fresh empty long term memory is just going to have to deal with the sarcastic shitty person that I used to be and figure it out.

            So I took the black sharpie I was left with and wrote in all capital letters, “You are Commander Shepard. The Reapers are coming. Find Garrus.”

            I chuckled while writing it, because wow am I going to be confused if my memory does indeed go, but what the hell, live while you can right?

**Author's Note:**

> This trash pile of a fic was spurred by a question a friend asked me. I modified it a bit, but the original prompt was: "You're in a zombie apocalypse and will lose your memory in an hour. You have one notecard and can write 10 words on it. What words will you write?"  
> I honestly answered that I would write nothing, but then jokingly wondered why not tell my future self I'm Commander Shepard?  
> This may turn into a multi-chap, but probably not. We'll see.


End file.
